Mars in Retrograde
by ShinySherlock
Summary: Sherlock's back, everything's wrong, and they have to go one step back to take two steps forward.


Sherlock is back from the dead. Has been, for a week.

Well. You can't be back from the dead if you never were dead to begin with.

There had been a lot of shouting, some punching, even a hug in the last seven days. John cried, letting Sherlock see the depth and breadth of what he had done, and Sherlock's face had crumpled, and that's when the hugging happened. John pulled away first and they don't talk about it.

John has moved back into 221b, and that's important, that means something, but John makes it clear-it does not mean that everything is all right.

It does not mean that everything is the same.

Sherlock is different. He's quieter. He tiptoes now when he used to stride. His eyes stay on John all the time; John can feel it on the back of his neck, right where his hair meets the skin of his nape.

Sherlock says please and thank you.

And every time he does, John tenses with the urge to slap him.

To stop it. Just stop this.

John is different, too. When he laughs, it's always bittersweet or hollow, like it's laugh or cry, only two options, so he chooses to laugh, but it's not quite right. Sherlock can see, John's being so careful. He's trying to forgive. But he can't forget, not even a little bit, and the anger is right there _right there_ all the time.

John stands in the kitchen at dawn. Sleep is inconsistent at best, has been since. Since. He makes the tea and there are no experiments in the way.

Sherlock, also in pajamas, emerges from his room, and knows, from the line of John's shoulders, from the way he holds his mug, that if he talks, he will break John somehow.

He walks over slowly, but loudly enough that John can hear him coming, and John stills, his gaze still focused on the tea in his left hand.

Sherlock can't figure it; what will help. What will take away this incubating fear that things will never again be right between them.

He wants to reach out somehow. He stops a foot away. He could put his hand out right now, right on John's wrist, John's shoulder. It might help. It might make all the difference.

But John is lifting his mug, turning away, and it's too late.

It hurt that when Sherlock came back, he looked so different. It was a measure of everything he had done without John. The task had often required disguise, and his normally raven hair had been bleached to blond. He was thinner, and dressed in a navy blue hoodie and faded jeans, and John stared and stared for the longest time.

John looked wrong, too. He'd let a beard and mustache grow in, and his hair was longer than Sherlock had ever seen it, and though it was all neatly trimmed, he hated it, hated how John's face was hidden from him. John's posture was different, the imaginary leg pain occasionally dogging him, his shoulders hunched in a way that spoke of resignation.

Every time John came downstairs and saw him blond and tiptoeing, every time Sherlock turned around a corner and saw him beleaguered and bearded, it was arresting and hateful.

Every time.

On the eighth day, Sherlock sees it. Sees John's reaction, the way his eyes dart up to Sherlock's ridiculous blond hair, how he winces at a "thank you," and it gives him an idea.

He comes back from the shops with a box of hair dye, flies up the steps, bounds into the flat. John looks up from the desk, but Sherlock blows right past him on his way to the kitchen. He drops the box on the table and he goes into his room to change clothes.

John stands up. Walks over to the table.

Sherlock comes back out of his room in boxers and a t-shirt. He looks up at John, who looks up at him from the box of dye, and something _something_. He feels it working. He grabs the box and heads to the bathroom, leaving the door open.

John think and thinks and listens to Sherlock dying his hair black, feels like he can see the color sinking in, india ink bleeding into paper.

Sherlock stands in the doorway, rubbing at his head with a towel, damp hair black as night, and sees John decide. Sees him stand up straighter and almost march towards the bathroom, and Sherlock backs up to let him in.

Sherlock sits on the toilet lid and watches as John unzips his kit, pulls out the electric clippers, and proceeds to carefully, methodically shorten his hair back to the army-length cut he'd had when they'd first met. He trims the wretched beard and mustache as close as he can, and Sherlock watches acres of hair fall to the floor, and then John is stowing the clippers, and starting to shave, and it's very much like the last tumbler of a lock falling into place.

Sherlock stands as John is finishing, rinsing his face, and yes, he's probably standing too close because John turns around and there's not much room between them, and then John's pressing himself back against the sink as Sherlock hands him his towel.

John takes it, wipes his face, drops the towel on the floor, all without looking at Sherlock, and then time stretches and they are both so still.

John looks up.

Sherlock sees.

He lifts his hand towards John's face, fingers hovering above the newly revealed skin of his jaw, and John inhales sharply through his nose, swallows, and Sherlock's eyes are drawn to his throat as his fingertips barely come to rest on moist, warm skin.

Another sharp inhalation, and Sherlock watches John's chest rising and falling, rising and falling, feels the jaw working to swallow again.

He moves his other hand up towards John's face, to mirror the first, but John reaches up suddenly, grasping each of Sherlock's wrists tightly in his hands.

A soft grunt of surprise escapes Sherlock, and he looks up at John's eyes.

The anger again, but more, too much at once, and Sherlock can barely catalog it all-hurt, confusion, but also an intensity, a desperate wish for everything to be all right.

He tries to put hope and reassurance into his own eyes, to stare and stare back at John in their fixed state, hands raised, John's grip loosening not at all.

Sherlock freezes, neither retreating nor advancing. John lets his eyes move up to Sherlock's hair, the way the curls are drying now and falling over his forehead, and something changes. John exhales through his mouth, and his gaze becomes a physical thing, moving from hair to lips to eyes.

Sherlock feels the air between them warm and thicken, and John's hands are relinquishing their hold enough that Sherlock can move his right hand to John's cheek, not the careful touch of fingertips, but palm fully pressed against skin, cradling the jaw, and John's eyes flutter for a moment.

Something.

John lets go of Sherlock's left wrist. He moves his hand up, stretches his fingers, and sinks them into inky curls, rubbing over scalp, sliding to the back of the head.

Their gaze is heavy and the air is too thick. Their breaths have become noisy things, rough pants, with chests working to suck in enough air.

Something.

Sherlock moves his left hand to the other side of John's face, and it's impossible to stop feeling. His fingers slide, his thumbs rub over the clean skin above John's lips.

John snakes his other hand up into Sherlock's hair, and clenches tightly.

He can't stop moving his fingers over and over fresh skin.

He can't stop pulling, down, down, until finally, inevitably, warm, full lips meet his own.

This.

_This_.


End file.
